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Gratz is the woman who inspired two separate cases before the Supreme Court on affirmative action in higher education, ending with the justices’ 6-2 ruling Tuesday that upheld a constitutional amendment in Michigan that voters approved in 2006. It bans preferential treatment based on race, gender, ethnicity or national origin.

Gratz said she will continue keeping watch over the issue in the coming months.

“Nothing from our opposition would surprise me anymore,” Gratz said. “They are radical and they would use any means necessary.”

Back in the mid-1990s, the university assigned a point value to applications from minority students that could help them get in. Gratz, who is white, didn’t land a spot despite a 3.8 GPA and a host of extracurricular activities. She was admitted to Michigan’s Dearborn campus instead of the university’s flagship.

Gratz sued in 1997. In 2003, the Supreme Court found Michigan’s specific methods of affirmative action to be illegal. But a ruling in a case that was paired with Gratz’s — Grutter v. Bollinger — upheld the principle behind the university’s admissions process, saying diversity is a compelling interest in higher education. The court said it expected that the need for weighting applications based on race would eventually disappear.

“You know, back in 2003 … the court had said that these policies should be eliminated in 25 years,” Gratz said. “I think that this moves that in that direction. It also says that voters and elected officials in other states can make that expiration date tomorrow if they’d like to.”

“These policies are living on borrowed time,” she said.

Fast forward to 2006: Gratz became the force behind a Michigan ballot initiative that banned affirmative action in the state. Some 58 percent of voters approved the measure, which also bans officials from taking race into account in hiring and contracting. It was challenged the day after it passed, leading to a series of court battles, arguments before the Supreme Court last October — which she attended — and culminating in Tuesday’s decision.

Gratz, now 37, said she thinks the country is moving closer to a point at which all colleges and universities will cast off affirmative action, either through legislation or through ballot measures like Michigan’s. Tuesday’s decision didn’t affect the legality of affirmative action itself, though it did affirm that states can ban the practice.

Last year, the Supreme Court revisited affirmative action again in Fischer v. University of Texas, a case the court remanded to the states, which left the Grutter decision untouched.

“There are always those who want to stand in the schoolhouse door, if you will,” Gratz said, alluding to attempts to stop public school integration in the 1960s. “I think that this ruling took us one step closer to equality.”

But there’s a larger issue at hand, said Michael Olivas, director of the Institute for Higher Education Law and Governance at the University of Houston. States are making decisions about higher education via ballot measures, which can overturn nuanced, long-standing public policy in an instant.

“Conducting important educational business via ballot measure is a very bad development, and I say it’s bad even if my issue would win,” Olivas said.

Gratz said she wasn’t surprised by the court’s decisive ruling on the ban. The court’s stronger position on race — particularly, liberal Justice Stephen Breyer’s decision to favor the ban — is a “testament to how important the issue of equality is,” Gratz said.

Gratz has turned her focus to the nonprofit she created, the XIV Foundation, which produces materials and reports in favor of ending all race-based policies. Its name comes from the 14th Amendment, specifically drawing from the Equal Protection clause. Her experiences have given her a “foundation to advocate for equal treatment under the law” in the future, Gratz said.

Gratz said she will need to digest the latest court ruling before planning her next move.

“We will be watching what universities and all colleges do in the wake of this ruling,” Gratz said. “There are challenges all the time to programs that treat people differently based on their skin color. I think we could very well see more.”

Just last week, Gratz challenged Michigan high school senior Brooke Kimbrough to a public debate over race-based college admissions. Kimbrough, who is black, is protesting her rejection from the University of Michigan.